


The Return

by abbichicken



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Boarding School, Character Study, Fanart, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pencil, Pilots, Secrets, Tea, The Blitz, Unspoken stuff, WWII, Wartime Romance, Welcome Home, World War II, cafe times, just talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-18 15:32:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11877507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: Collins had always expected to see his partner again. Honest, he had. But...maybe not like this._____





	1. Scone One

  
Here he is. Just like that. Striding in like the queue in the post office made him late, rather than…rather than who knows what.

“I…wouldn’t have thought you would do this to me in public.” Collins is flushed, these words are flat, issued in necessary shock, his face pink all the way to the hairline, breath immediately stuck just beneath his Adam’s apple.

“But you did expect to see me…”

“Every morning since our last, I’ve expected to see you the moment I open my eyes. No news is…no news. I know you.”

“I’m here now.”

“Won’t you…sit down?” The pinkness remains, burning, now. Collins is usually more bothered by this tendency than he is now; he would figure, if he could think of anything beyond the sudden apparition, that some times justify such reactions.

Farrier takes a seat – moving quietly as ever he did, careful not to scrape the spindly chair legs on the tiled floor. He sits neatly, exhales, like that was the moment of satisfaction he was waiting for. Looks up into Collins’ eyes, and there’s a full, delighted smile behind it all.

“You look good,” Collins says. “I had expected – “

“When you were expecting me, you had a full visual, of course…”

“I did. I had a few. Not this. I expected worse.”

“You thought I would come home, but you lowered your expectations regarding my…appearance.”

“It seemed the most plausible.”

“Did you think I would have had the opportunity for a bath, or was I still covered in mud?” Farrier is so placid, so very himself, that Collins wonders momentarily if he is a figure from a dream, and he’ll wake up shortly at home, hungry and tired and alone as he has been for far too long.

“This is also not the conversation I had imagined we might have.”

“And that conversation…” Inscrutable.

Collins raises his hand to the side of his face, obscuring to all but Farrier the fact that he’s pursing his lips, just a touch, just…a touch.

“There weren’t so many words to the conversation I’d imagined. But, please, tell me. Why here?” He allows himself a deeper, more determined breath. There’s dizziness behind the eyes, only a bit, but that could be because it’s hotter in here than it ought to be. Could be that.

“In the hope that we could take a breath. That I could take a moment to sit and look at…the view, just the way that I’d imagined I would.”

“Which way was that?”

“Over a cup of weak tea and a dry scone.”

As if on cue, the waitress brings over just that. “Top-up?” she inquires, of Collins, whose pot was empty before Farrier even arrived.

“Please,” he says, automatically, without so much as a glance at her, can’t move his gaze, not yet.

They sit in silence as she takes the china cup over to the urn, fills it to the brim, leaving no room to speak of for milk of any sort, and returns it to the saucer.

“Speaking of lowering one’s expectations…” Farrier says, eyeing the slopping wet tea, picking up his crumbly, pale scone and slicing it in half.

“You thought of here.”

“Our Friday mornings mean a lot to me.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Would’ve lost the element of surprise if I’d met you at the proper time and place though, surely?”

“Oh, do stop.” Collins tries to give him a slight kick beneath the table, but supposes wrong and kicks only air, unsettling himself a bit. Farrier chokes on a crumb. They begin to giggle, just a little, and both know more than well enough to bite away such an impulse, rather than letting the awkwardness dissolve away in careless hilarity which inevitably becomes the sort of laughter that isn’t exactly welcome at the Marigold Tea Rooms.

“I have very little intention of stopping anything,” Farrier says, catching his breath, and consuming the last mouthful of rapidly consumed scone. “Oh, sorry. I was going to share but…”

Collins twitches an eyebrow. “You know I’ve never believed in anything that could have jam on it being consumed without it.”

“Well, it was revolting, but at the same time, marvellously consistent.”

“Even before, they never seemed to have the touch for baking here, did they?”

“Part of the charm,” Farrier agrees, whilst shaking his head. He drinks his tea in a single swallow.

The air tastes of a thousand more words unsaid.

“I really did think…” Collins says, and then stops himself. “It’s so good to have you home.”

“It’s good to have a home to come to. It didn’t sound…” Farrier stops himself, too. So much of everyday speech has been rendered unnecessary, too miserable, or finding itself downright dangerous over these past year.

“You see,” he offers, in his head, this is by way of explanation, “here, there are only so many things we can say.”

Collins tempers his up-until-then clear delight for the words, “I wouldn’t. Ask. I won’t ask. Even later. I…can only imagine… I understand.” “

We’ll see.” 

Farrier is hopeless, mask-like; his eyes are clear and bright as a man with the sun on his face on the first day of spring, which this - soggy November - absolutely is not. Collins has been looking for ghosts in his partner’s eyes, for the haunting, for the misery that has certainly made itself known in some way. Torture? Starvation? The ingrained dirt of months of trekking through fields and backwaters? Farrier really does look good. No slimmer than when they last met. A little tired at worst. Perhaps his back is broader. Collins tries to stop himself from comparing, from wondering, from trying to put together a story which will make this more real than the spectre he currently feels it is.

He had imagined the body. Wounded, perhaps. Was ready to pick him out of a crowded dormitory of the rescued, knows he would have been able to tell, somehow, know that he’d come home. A wire would have been sent, and he might have taken a train to the coast to check, pursuing a nagging sense. He had imagined a night-time rescue, the way led by a message, perhaps in code. The invitation to be at the Marigold had, in Collins’ best thoughts, been a suggestion that there would be word from France, or maybe Belgium. A sign that his hopes had not been in vain. In reality, he had thought it might actually be from one of their old Masters, as it had purported to, passing by, elderly now and eager to catch up with one of his best pupils, congratulate him, perhaps, on his latest military achievement, or, at the very least, on having survived for as long as he has. It isn’t that this is an anti-climax. It isn’t, it isn’t, of course it isn’t that – he is so desperately grateful with every fibre of his body (some more than others, indeed).

Farrier is dressed in new clothes, not his clothes, nondescript clothes that could allow him to be anyone. He’s always been able to blend in far better than Collins finds himself able to - can drop the stance if he chooses, put his head down and pass, unremarkable. It’s only strange because that’s the thing that drew Collins, the new boy in school with the faraway accent, to him in the first place. Someone with something to hide, something to get through. Someone who needed…someone else. It’s been his position in life for a long time. Someone’s somebody else.

The adjustment was painful.

This moment is the one at which the source of the pain is removed, and the relief is flooding, significant, but you’ve yet to look down at the damage that’s been done. Blissful, with an edge of trepidation.

Collins swallows nothing, and reaches for his now-tepid tea, which tastes slightly of baking soda, and very little like tea.

Farrier just, watches him, taking in every movement. “It might take a while,” he says.

Collins nods. “It’s…not what I’d thought.” “Lucky you lowered your expectations, in that case.”

Farrier smiles, and continues to look as perfect as ever he has. The waitress returns to take Farrier’s plate.

“Top-up?” she asks, identically to her previous tone. “I think so,” Farrier says, softly. She whips the cup away too, and the men once more wait silently, eyes roving each other’s stillness.

 


	2. First Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of dust and rest.

Once away from the tea rooms, they’d returned to Collins’ mother’s apartment in Finchley, still standing as happily as ever it had done, despite the Luftwaffe’s best efforts only a matter of weeks before. As the child of an early Ayrshire airman, lost slap in the middle of the Great War, Collins was hauled down south young. His mother, a dedicated haberdasher, set herself up in London in tailoring, and insisted upon her son staying at arm’s length for as much of the school year as possible. “We’ll spend your father’s pension on your future,” she explained it, back then, and to be entirely fair, if he were to reflect upon it now, there’s no way his life would have panned out this well amongst any other variables. 

This flat is, to Collins, a symbol of things also turning out for the best for his mother: the furnishings are louche, a fashion she adores but that his father wouldn’t have tolerated for a moment: the location is very ‘just so’, and it was an entertaining place to be, for a weekend here and there. A mix of people, possibilities, a London worth defending. With a key and the run of the place, not an hour from Fighter Command, the flat’s been handy as an afternoon relief from the closeness of quarters. 

Farrier, whilst appreciative of the convenience, was generally not best enamoured with the place, having previously rejected it as a ‘dusty heap of whatnot’, made worthwhile only as a result of its comparative privacy, and the gently accepting presence of Mrs. Watt downstairs, who whispers conspiratorially at whichever of them she happens to bump into, “My son was like you, you know. You would have liked him. Ever so handsome. Been dead thirty years, now.” 

“I would’ve as well,” Farrier had once said to Collins, once they’d got in after she’d addressed them collectively outside the front door. “Picture of him on the nightstand. Went down to change a lightbulb for her. Handsome chap indeed. Marvellous hair. Course, he’d be fifty-odd now, so you’ve nothing to worry about.”

Collins had only raised an eyebrow in response. Of all the things he’s never worried about, Farrier is at the top of the list. 

Farrier has always been a calm sort of person. To the extent where, even as he found himself in the cockpit of a fighter plane, bound for an early recon mission, the commandore shook his head and said, “You were born to do this, weren’t you?” Farrier gave a little shrug, and purposefully drowned out his own reply with the sounds of aviation.

He was calm at school when set upon by the most entitled of his classmates, who didn’t like anyone that wanted to be upright, and didn’t believe in allowing their methods of maintaining the status quo to go unquestioned simply because he was new to the system.

He was calm when the blond boy with the rare accent took him to the end of the school’s gardens, asked to wrestle, pinned him in five and asked with a jocular confidence that was entirely staged and never even slightly felt, “Shall I kiss you, now?”

Farrier had only sighed a little, and replied dryly, “If you must.”

It’s that calmness that Collins supposes made him as fine a pilot as he is. Neither of them are reckless. Both of them are measured, organised, quiet, considering. They’ve both been flying as long as either of them have been able to drive: the benefits of a private school with its own cadet corps sending them both straight to the heart of the RAF, jostling at the front of the queue for the newest aircraft. If Collins wasn’t ‘born for it’ in the way that his partner was, he has at least been made for it. They make a good pair, in the air as much as on the ground. Collins has been on solo missions since Dunkirk; coincidence, perhaps, but no less a relief. Navigating others feels five times as hard as working with someone you know inside and out.

Anyway - the calmness is what kept him hoping this reunion would happen. It’s not so easy to see off someone who isn’t frightened of anything.

“Have you been back here much?” Farrier asked, eyeing the shabby old place as Collins dusted off a bottle and poured them a decent quantity of under-the-counter Scotch.

“Not much. Mother’s decided to stay up with her sisters for the duration, so at least it’s here as and when, but I’ve been down in Exeter with 10 Group since, well, June. Did you know…” Collins cuts himself off. “Talking feels utterly inadequate. Or at least, impractical. If we aren’t going to…”

Farrier undoes the button at the top of his shirt, pauses, looks up, and then repeats the motion with another. He exhales heavily, as if the shirt had been keeping that in. Collins notes that Farrier’s chest, too, looks as muscular as ever it has, then internally repudiates himself for that, too. This train of thought has been the most complicated since the moment Farrier walked in, and it isn’t becoming any easier. 

“I didn’t mean…”

Farrier raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t mean…?”

“I see our time apart has made you no less infuriating.”

Farrier constructs a ‘hurt’ expression.

Collins chooses to move forwards, slides him the Scotch along the worktop and takes his own over to stand by the window. 

Outside, London is at sunset. “Time to draw the curtains,” he observes, but takes a sip of his drink, instead. “Want to come and take a look?”

From their vantage point, London stretches down a mile or three. 

“Quiet out,” Farrier says. 

Collins takes a deep breath, exhales, and takes another sip before replying, “It’s been a hell of a summer.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Who knows you’re here?”

Farrier shakes his head. “I didn’t think anyone would call a parade.”

“I mean, if word gets back…”

“Oh, I’ll come in with you tomorrow.”

“You know I’m due back tomorrow?”

“I know you’re terrible at taking leave, but I thought, for a message from Mr. Wilkins, you might make a brief journey across town.”

“You knew I was alive…”

“Only for sure when you accepted the invitation, but, you’ve always been a lucky sod, Collins, I don’t expect this war to do for you.”

“Nor I you.”

“Let’s keep it that way. Sometimes it feels like this is still just the beginning.”

Collins doesn’t respond to this, takes only the briefest of glances at Farrier’s eyes to ascertain that nothing will be read from them.

“Help me draw the blinds.”

As they fight the pulleys and heavy, unco-operative fabric, Collins pushes the question circling his mind as far back as he can. How much does he know? Asking wouldn’t yield anything but another conversation neither of them could finish, nor, even if they could, trust. 

This war tests in the strangest of ways. 

  
_____  


They stretch out on Collins’ mother’s beloved pink velvet armchairs in silence. They were supposed to have protective sheets on them during periods of absence, but Collins last left in a hurry, unable to parse the emptiness alone, and didn’t bother. Whilst the block may be safe, nothing, it seems, in the whole of Britain is spared the dust. The street is quiet tonight, and the wireless would, Collins feels, only raise more questions than it might answer. 

Collins wants to know, to know so much that it hurts, literally, he hasn’t eaten all afternoon and hasn’t thought about sustenance since that scone he didn’t have, and it is that as much as anything else that’s causing his stomach cramps, but they suit the mood so well, he continues to placate them with sparing sips of warm whisky and no more than that. 

Farrier nods off a couple of times, and wakes himself up with a jolt each time, and a broad smile like he’d forgotten where he was, and has just remembered - accurate, indeed. Collins simply watches him, when this takes up least attention. Home. For now. 

“Bed?” Collins asks, the third time Farrier jerks into life, even though it’s only half seven.

Farrier’s smile is apologetic, now. “I’d like that. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”

Day? Collins wants to yell about what a long damn life they’re leading at this point, but again, just a look, it’s enough to hold him back and keep him quiet.

“Go take a wash. I’ll shake the dust off everything, see if I can find a couple more blankets.”

It’s both colder and more damp in the flat than it has been for a while - time of year, the feel of neglect - but neither have acknowledged it out loud, if they’ve even noticed. Discomfort is as familiar as the wallpaper by this point.

And it’s only when Farrier climbs into bed beside him, dressed in long johns and undershirt from Collins’ childhood wardrobe, a little tight, and very well worn, cosy as a weekend break in 1938, and instead of embracing Collins and something useful, so much even as a chaste kiss on the cheek, he only turns away and lies there poker straight, falls asleep as easily as a key turned off the engine, that Collins feels, for the first time in a very, very long time, the old silver threads of fear lace themselves through his veins, and the panic starts for real. 


	3. Day Two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> November 1940: War doesn't have time for heart-to-hearts.

“What the bloody hell are you two doing here?” the Commodore says, obviously as surprised to see Farrier as Collins was, although, presumably, in a different manner.

“Heard you were running short on pilots, Sir,” Farrier offers, and immediately the quip is out of his mouth, he pulls a face that shows he regrets the flippancy of that, means it kindly, means he’s back, and here to work.

“You’re coming with me,” the Commodore says, looking him up and down. “God knows what you’ve been up to. Collins, explain yourself?”

“Returning from leave, Sir. Just a day.”

“One day these days is a bloody lifetime. Fine, get a shift on. Quiet night last night means we’ll be in for it tonight if the weather holds.” The Commodore looks at Farrier thoughtfully, for a moment. “You in flying shape, Farrier?”

“Always.” Calm as if it were any other day.

“11 Group needs all the damn help it can get, but, first things first, I want to know where you’ve been, and what you know. Make sure you’re not a Jerry spy.”

The Commodore’s voice is so dry, there’s no knowing how much he does or doesn’t mean that last. The echo of it imprints itself on the back of Collins’ mind, will haunt him, behind other thoughts, in the days and weeks to come.

Collins doesn’t even have time for a ‘goodbye’, as Farrier is reasonably bodily shoved towards the Officers’ Mess, not that he would’ve said one, of course. His instinct is to wait - instinct; everything inside him only wants to wait, and not to go out and be struck down right now of all times, right when they’re just reunited, the worst of all stories. He wonders if he could have insisted on going in there with Farrier, to be a help, whatever that might mean, damnit, he just wants to know what happened for himself and can’t stand the idea that the Commodore will, any minute. As long as Farrier tells him, of course.

_None of your business_ , he tells himself, quietly and firmly. _None of your damn business_.

_Make sure you’re not a Jerry spy…_ comes in for the first time.

It isn’t that Collins thinks for a single second that Farrier might be anything of the kind, it’s the space between that suggestion and the fact of the matter being that there is a gap, a large, gaping…gap between before, and now. And the emptiness is loud and confusing, and none of the roads he’d prepared himself for were taken, and this circle of wondering is excruciating, and it has only been a matter of hours, and he hasn’t slept, barely at all, laid so near but not quite daring to touch, just, breathing, consciously, quietly, staring at Farrier’s back until dawn showed the wear on the blackout curtains.

He comes alert, alone outside the front, starts towards the barracks. 0730, and the sky’s more than light enough for the morning sorties to have got out, if not back again. Cloudless and inviting, little, if any, wind in the chill air.

And so it begins. Collins makes five flights in 20 hours; by midnight, his mind is firmly occupied, for the first time in a while, by the job.

At 0200, he returns to a bunk. His mind is frenetic, buzzing, but empty, his body still swooping inside as if it were a part of one of the aircraft that brought him back home over, and over again. He scrabbles inside his bag for the whiskey he brought back from his mother’s flat, and takes three straight swallows from the bottle. Both mind and body pause, for a second, as the alcohol is welcomed by his underfed state, and then, gently and obediently, dial back their respective states to comparative calm.

Two down today. Two who ought to be in here, alongside him. One fucked up in the dark, down in a spin of flame and moonlit smoke, pieces all over a field in Kent. The other, shot straight up in a fireball. New Zealander, only been with them a couple of weeks.

Collins wonders where their bags are.

His stomach lurches again, and he reaches for the bottle to try to calm it. It’s almost empty, and he curses everything and wonders when the next chance to head into town to ‘acquire’ another bottle will be. He drank this month’s ration within the first few days of the month, just back up from the West Country. It was a difficult time, he told himself. Just have to get through it.

He’s awoken in the still-dark by a hand gripping his shoulder.

“Morning,” says Farrier, and Collins wakes up in three levels of realisation, firstly, that this is a dream in a dream but that’s fine, and this can only be a good dream, and he deserves one of those, after everything, second, in a panic, they’re still in the flat and the previous dream, that they’d got up and gone to Command and that he’s been out and all was just that, a dream, and that he’ll be late back, and third, third is…that they’re here, now, and Farrier is here, in the dorm, and talking to him as if this were any normal start.

“Out before first light. Coming?”

He asks as if there were no other questions.

Collins’ head is tight and hot and protests as it’s lifted from the pillow. He groans, audibly.

“Need this?” Farrier fixes a warm mug of tea into his hand, even as he’s sitting up.

“Oh, you…” and Collins drinks it down in one, chokes on a bit of limescale at the end of it.

“Sorry,” Farrier says, automatically, and Collins shakes his head, clearing his throat, puts the cup down under the bed, reluctantly.

“You…”

“All good to go. Come on out, it’s still early.”

Collins pulls his trousers on; finds he slept in his shirt as well as his vest. The creases won’t show under his jacket, but still.

“I’ll…take that…” Farrier says, removing the bottle from a tangle of covers. He upends it into his mouth, makes the most of the last couple of drops.

Collins rubs his eyes. His body feels as if every individual part had been separated from the rest, then stitched back together with the most careless of hands. Just cramp, just the mornings, just the terrible lack of rest. Just a very long year.

Outside, it’s colder than yesterday. Damp, too - the sort of damp that crawls straight through any gaps in clothes in wisps, and stays there until it becomes sweat and discomfort.

They stop to smoke, the most acceptable form of pause in any part of this war. Collins had resisted cigarettes when young, but, once it became clear there was little chance of seeing the war out, the time for holding off anything that might bring a few moments of respite was quite clearly past.

“Have you slept?” he asks. Farrier is changed, ready to go up, shows no signs of discomfort. Still.

“A little,” Farrier answers, without explaining where. Collins hadn’t thought to look for him in the dorm (quarters, this isn’t school now) when he got back, and there’s the nagging pull of guilt inside, peeking out from where it’s been hiding behind a pouting curiosity he doesn’t feel he has the power to express.

“So you’re not…”

“Court martialled? Nope.”

“I didn’t…”

“I know.”

“I’m in the first round today. See what’s on fire… Had a long night.”

“I heard. I’ll be up with you today. I thought it’d be good to have a smoke before the bells.”

The words are like a blanket, a tendril of warmth at the idea of having someone he can trust and work with up there. Since September, experience has been thin on the ground, pilots out in eight countries, whether on active duty or in training, and those at home spread about the country in the vain hope that a half squadron will be more effective than none at all. The ‘weekend pilots’ are wearing thin, too - either snapped up by the other services, or shot down. Night flights are taking a quick toll on men without the well-developed instincts for the air, and the way things are going, most of the work will be in the dark before long.

Collins sucks so hard at his cigarette that it’s gone in half the time of Farrier’s, and he grinds the end of it firmly into the leaf-strewn dirt with his heel, resentful.

“I don’t know how to say so little to you,” Collins says, eventually, feeling every inch the idiot even with those words.

Farrier smiles, and tilts his head to the side a little, which he does when he’s trying to indicate he’s being nice, and isn’t sure that what he says will do the job.

“I’m not stopping you,” is what he comes out with, taking another drag and exhaling in a neat succession of silver-grey smoke rings.

Stuck for an answer, Collins takes a quick look about the empty yard, replies with a step forward, wrapping both arms around Farrier, who takes evasive cigarette action to avoid burning either of them, but allows his other arm to return the favour. Wraps further around than it used to.

Collins feels, for the first time in quite some time, like he would like to keep hold of this moment, and to hell with everything and everyone else. The world is still and quiet, and Farrier is warm, and entirely present.

They stand, for a moment, embraced, comfortable in this stance for the first time since they were reunited. Collins is a head above Farrier at the best of times; they make for a neat fit.

The air tastes of oil, dog ends and dew.

It takes all Collins has not to try for a kiss, maybe push him back into the bushes and relieve some of this most agonising of tensions with a few quick motions and a couple of practiced phrases, but that, that is not where they are. Not now. Certainly not now. It’s not so much that it’s here - blind eyes are turned, and from time to time there’ve been well-known ‘culprits’, but even when one is the most valuable of commodities, there’s no knowing whether authority will decide to make a point.

“You holding up?” Farrier asks, when finally Collins pulls away.

“What do you mean?” Of course he is. He’s not the one who’s been…whatever it is.

“I suppose now’s not the time. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. That’s all.” Farrier’s trying to catch his eye - not something he does all that often. His look is questioning, despite the sentence.

In the distance, the sky has broken to a dirty blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I ought to note that I'm doing what I can to get this at least plausible, but without disappearing into endless reading and losing all my threads (I do have threads, honest). Resources range from family notes to school textbooks, to Wikipedia, to the excellent BBC 'People's War' site.


	4. Illustration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Illustrative portraits for this fic inspired by the style of WWII artist Eric Kennington's portrait of Douglas Bader.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both works by my wife, P, who asked me not to identify her any further, and to whom I am exceptionally grateful <3 
> 
> Please don't repost from here without a link-back; you can retweet from @thisaeshaw if you fancy.

  
  



	5. The Other Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing will wait.

Collins is a shocking sight.

It hasn’t been that long, has it?

Long enough.

Farrier could kick himself.

The tea rooms don’t help with their drab, make-do furnishings, and the taped-up windows. Everything casts a shadow back here, side street, lucky this hasn’t taken a hit, Farrier didn’t know that when he sent the wire but figured it was worth the chance.

Collins has always been slight, a pushover on the rugby field, but still, stronger than his kindness lets on. Today, though, now, Collins can only be described as thin; his figure, his face, his skin, even his gaze. His eyes are tired, constantly refocusing. His shoulders are still held back, posture-perfect as only a boy brought up under constant scrutiny can be, and if you barked at him to drop and give twenty or fifty he’d probably be able to make it, but more by virtue of weighing a half of what he used to than because he retains anything like the strength he used to exude.

Farrier had imagined this going quite differently. They’d hug, right there because who doesn’t when their hero returns? Perhaps there would be applause, or maybe a little knowing throat-clearing and eye-rolling, and the odd mutter of “For goodness’ sake!” or, “Not in here, chaps!”

The second he sets eyes on Collins, hunched over an empty teacup, fingers tapping the tabletop as if everyone in the world were late but him, Farrier knows that everything that’s kept him pulling for this was only in his imagination. The worst of things seems to be the case. Or, the second worst. The worst of things was coming home to a headstone, or not even that, but, he thought he might have known if such a thing had happened. Telepathy, a voice in the night, a whisper in the ear. Some sort of haunting.

This, though, is also some sort of haunting.

* * * * *

It’s been a long way home, but not the eventful one it might have been. Not the sort where there are great stories, or great heroism. No tunnels, no tricks, no hidden knives. An escape, dodging in the dark, skittish movements and taking advantage of a pilot’s ability to remain calm in the most dizzying situations. A little begging for help, a little luck, and a lot of walking. The occasional swim, a dozen nights in barns, and a dozen more in the beds of good people. Not like that. Well. Not really like that. A farmer’s wife, so kind, so incredibly kind, alone for over a year and she only held him, but still. It was warm, and it was comfort for them both, and even that makes him feel guilt down to his toes. It doesn’t look like Collins has had anything of the sort.

He’s heard the news. “Never have so many…” travelled fast. To say he would’ve run home to do his part suggests he didn’t try, and it was only in the final stretches, up from the coast and finally into London, jumping trains like when they were schoolboys hopping down to Bristol, that the damage of the time he missed hits him like the tonnes of bricks littering the sidings, scattering the horizon.

The air is filled with dust, everything is covered in dust, from the boys picking apart rubble looking for who knows what, to the women working in the fields. The closer you get to town, the dustier it gets, and the sounds of creaking joists, crumbling structure and incessant repair work are as loud as the silences between them.

Across the Channel, they say Britain’s getting it, hard. Every time Farrier’s French gets a look-in, he can’t help but flicker back to school days and dust of a different kind: chalk, the croak of the master, tired and bent at the front of the class, perfect accent, tinged with regret and endless twitching from trench memories he’ll never share. The collective scratching on slate, repetition, repetition, repetition, Farrier leaning in his seat to copy Collins’ work (C, always three rows in front of F, and the neatest handwriting in the form; everybody’s favourite when they weren’t establishing social strata). Turns out you can get by without remembering the masculine and feminine when you’re desperate for anything of home.

Over here, the newspapers are firm. Bright. Dark, at the same time. Ten days, they reckon it took for the aircraft factory down south to get back to full production after taking a heavy shelling. Houses are modified, repaired, neighbours taking each other in, others leaving the capital altogether, some following the work, others trying to stay alive.

The train into town is emptier than he’s ever known it.

The retaliatory attacks on Germany are taking place even now: even as he’s fought so hard to come home from a comparative stone’s throw away, there’s every chance he’ll walk through the door and they’ll fling him right up in the air, over and above and straight back to bring this kind of ruin to another town, in another place.

There’s nothing like accepting the help of the strangers on the ‘other side’ to show you this war is taking everyone, for everything they have.

You can’t think too much, Farrier thinks, as the dust swirls and the train drives him closer to home, such as home can be when you’re forever at the whims of your superiors. None of them can really afford to think at all. It’s the better part of their job. Over quickly, except when it isn’t.

And that’s the line that runs through his mind when he finally sets eyes on Collins. Over quickly, except when it isn’t.

The guilt flushes through Farrier like nothing he’s known in years.

Collins looks up at him and there’s a liquid blankness in his eyes, not the joyous recognition he’d hoped for, not at all.

“I…wouldn’t have thought you would do this to me in public.”

 _What the fuck was I thinking?_ is what Farrier wants to reply, but doesn’t. His heart races, and everything seems heavier than it ought to.

He moves slowly, slowly as he can. Collins looks like the slightest of sudden movements might about finish him off.

The conversation is stilted. Everything is hard. Everything has so much space between it. Farrier had thought there’d be room for a laugh, a welcome, but it turns out that it’s been a long year, and that there’s more between them than there’s ever been, and he doesn’t even know where to start. He’s never had to think like this.

When all he had to do was get back, it was so much easier than this.

He was supposed to be a hero, of sorts, but it turns out he’s everything but.

He does have stuff to offer. He does. It’s going to be useful. It’s not much, but it is something. Just a bit. The smallest justification of the distance he’s travelled and the conversations, such as they were, that he’s had. First-hand experience, a chance to put the smallest pieces of the puzzle together.

It seems like nothing, through the gauntlet of blank existence he’s come back to.

Collins drinks his second cup of tea like it was dishwater, and seems no more revived by it than anything else. Farrier does his best to be jovial, to be kind, but it’s like they’re speaking separate languages.

He wants to know, but knows enough. Wants to ask, but knows Collins doesn’t grant himself the kindness of explanation without the sort of preamble (and drink) there’s nothing like enough time for now. Besides, he’s tired, and Collins looks like he’s hardly slept since, well, June. Maybe it’s enough, maybe it’s best, for now, just to be. Wait it out. There’s only so much fire to fall from the sky this year, surely.

The flat is cold and damp, but it’s four walls, a floor and ceiling, and it’s the first time Farrier’s been off the ground floor in months. The chance for a distant view is welcome. The chance to even be near Collins is enough, but he holds himself back, cautious. Tired. Cautious. This war isn’t about him. This time isn’t about him. Damnit, it was easier when it was only about him.

He doesn’t mean to fall straight asleep, had wanted to be held and exorcise his damped-down adrenaline as much as Collins had hoped to do the same, but he hasn’t tasted whiskey in weeks and the bed is beyond soft and welcoming. Used to taking advantage of what little security he can, he’s out like a light without any control over the situation.

And in the morning, they’re already on the way back.

It’s clear to Farrier: nothing will wait. All he’s missed is time, and from the unfamiliar faces that line the barracks when he’s finally free to mix back amongst them, it’s clear that time is not something afforded to many of them.

“Could’ve done with you a lot sooner,” the Commodore growls, without consideration for anything. Farrier delivers what he can - front lines, side lines, overheard information, the mood of the Germans, the mood of the fallen French, the tips from the Norwegians he was all too briefly alongside. “Would’ve been a sight more useful to have you up there,” he’s told, and everyone, everything is bitter.

It’s not that he would give up - not on Britain, not on his duty, not on himself, and certainly never on Collins - but it is so incredibly clear that this is going to be significantly harder than he’d thought.

And so it begins.

Farrier waits for Collins to return to the dorm in a state that barely passes for conscious. He tries to catch up on sleep, tries to catch up on water, tries to spend his time memorising his silk maps and putting together what he knows from the briefings about where they’re at, significant advances in planes, in tactics, even in this short period of time; a switch to 18-hour shifts if needs’ be, and that’s going to be a test and then some.

When Collins returns, Farrier is in the bunk next to him, propped up, ready to welcome him back, demonstrate the way he’s flooded with warmth and relief that there’s more time to hash this all out, but the man doesn’t even see him. Farrier watches him cradle a bottle, fail to undress himself, and essentially pass straight out. It hurts, but maybe everything does right now. Perhaps it’s better to get used to it.

It doesn’t stop him determining that they’ll take a moment - just a moment - in the morning.

To be held in the faltering morning light, even by a shadow of the man he would do anything for, is enough for now.


End file.
